11 000 pass­ports left un­col­lected
at Registry

MORE than 11 000 pass­ports have not been claimed with some even ex­pir­ing be­fore they are col­lected by their own­ers, an of­fi­cial has said.

e Regis­trar-Gen­eral, Mr Cle­mence Masango, said the depart­ment was fac­ing a prob­lem of un­col­lected pass­ports with some of the doc­u­ments ex­pir­ing be­fore they have been col­lected.

“Ap­prox­i­mately 11 144 pass­ports dat­ing back to 10 years re­main un­col­lected. I am not sure how many are ex­pir­ing but we have them. Ad­min­is­tra­tively it is dif­fi­cult and cum­ber­some to come up with the ex­act fig­ure of ex­pir­ing pass­ports within the time­frame of the com­ing months as the process in­volves pulling each and ev­ery pass­port from the files to con­firm va­lid­ity for all the 10 pro­vin­cial of­fices,” he said.

Mr Masango said the depart­ment was fac­ing a back­log due to some con­straints al­though they were work­ing to­wards set­ting a time­line of pro­duc­ing pass­ports within a pe­riod of four weeks.

“The depart­ment is cur­rently ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a back­log in the pro­cess­ing of pass­ports dat­ing back to June 2018 due to for­eign cur­rency con­straints. The depart­ment is com­mit­ted to ob­serv­ing set time­lines in the Client Ser­vice Char­ter and pro­duce pass­ports within four weeks. In this re­gard, the depart­ment has come up with an im­ple­men­ta­tion plan to clear the pass­port back­log sub­ject to avail­abil­ity of re­sources,” he said.

Mr Masango also high­lighted that they have in­tro­duced short mes­sage ser­vice (SMS) to in­form ap­pli­cants when their pass­ports were ready.

“Since 2012, the depart­ment in­tro­duced SMS to in­form mem­bers of the pub­lic when their pass­ports are ready for col­lec­tion. We also par­tic­i­pate at the Zim­babwe In­ter­na­tional Trade Fair (ZITF) and Pro­vin­cial Agri­cul­tural Shows where mem­bers of the pub­lic are en­cour­aged to visit the of­fice of is­sue and col­lect their pass­ports,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to the RG’s Of­fice Clients Ser­vice Char­ter, the cheap­est pass­port val­ued at $53 should be is­sued within four weeks. —@ Pre­cious Maphos7